Pretty good, but could have been much better.

Rating: 8/10 (27 July 2003)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** "28 Days Later"
By James Johnston
At it's heart, this is a basic "The apocolypse is here" kind of movie (A la "The Omega Man"). Here's the basic premise :
==============================================================> A group of Animal Rights activists break into the Cambridge Primate Research Institute to free some monkeys being experemented on. Despite being warned by a terrified scientists, they unlock the doors, freeing the infected apes....
28 days later (wink) Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up in a hospital, after a long coma. He finds the hospital empty - no patients, no doctors, no one. After wandering around London, he is beset by murderous people that have been infected by the RAGE virus. Jim is rescued by Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark, two survivors of the plauge. From there, they search for any other sign of life....
==============================================================> The basic idea behind the movie is great. There have not been many movies recently using the "World is Over" premise, and it's good to see one.

There are also some nice deviants from traditional Apocolyptic Films: Instead of slow, mutated humans turned zombies, there are fast, insane, murderous humans who have been infected by RAGE. And when bitten, the victims are 'turned' in only 10-20 seconds.
Another cool deviation is the lack of a 'total' apocolypse - England is completely infected, but North America and Europe remain uninfected (though there are hints that the virus may be spreading to those locations).

But the movie is far from perfect. There are some pretty huge plot holes in quite a few locations. And a few incidents don't make sense. For example when they find the military base and the 2 women are expected to sleep with the troops to 're-populate' the Earth. When they refuse, the soldiers try to rape them. This makes little sense - the soldiers KNOW that the other countries are still uninfected, but think that the world is over and they will die.
Also, I find it hard to believe a group of animal activists could get through security into the Cambridge Institute - in an area so dangerous, there would have to be tons of guards and such.
Those are 2 small examples that I can think of off the top of my head. There are many others.
Another problem is the lack of 'monsters'. In a city of over a million, there must be hundreds of thousands of mutants. But you only ever see about 7-10 in a group. And you don't get many close-up shots of them, but I suppose that's to add to the scare factor.
Also, appearantly the movie was filmed with Digital Film or something, instead of the standard film. Why, I don't know. I have no idea why they did this, the film appeared slightly 'fuzzy' in a few places, mostly in far-off shots.
Another thing I didn't like about the movie was the lack of a back-story behind the 'apocoplyse'. We don't see the riots, the carnage, the military blockades, etc.
Lastly, the ending was TERRIBLE. I saw it with 2 endings - which I will call the "Good" (all 3 signal a plane, the original ending) and the "Bad" ending (Jim dies from a gunshot would - Selena and Hannah continue to try and find an excape). I'll go from the "Good" ending, since the "Bad" one was pretty much just an attempt to get more people into the theaters. In the last scene, you see a military jet fly over the house, while the 3 survivors have made a giant sign out of sheets that says "HELLO". The jet sees them and radios back. This leaves the ending open enough to make the movie feel incomplete, while not open enough to warrant a sequel (at least not a good one). So you leave the theater feeling a little shafted.
Well, enough with the bad. Let's start with the good.
The acting is great - esp. because while these actors/actresses aren't really 'unknown', they arn't big-budget stars. Murphy does an especially great job as the confused and scared Jim.
The Cinemotagraphy, despite the above film problem, is excellent. The shots of Trefalgar (sp?) square deserted, Big Ben not working, empty streets etc are fantastic. I have no idea how they managed to get those shots, but they are great.
Although I didn't take much notice of it, the Score was great when I did. Nice moody music.
And finnaly, the movie is indeed Scary. I saw it with my little sister and her friend, and they jumped 4 feet in the air when the infected jumped out. And you are on-the-edge of your seat through a good portion of it.
This movie is a good watch, but It could have been better - throwing out the survivors fighting survivors part would have raised it from an 8 to a 9, as that part was totally pointless IMO.
But non-the-less, a good movie that I reccomend whole-heartedly.
James "Black Wolf" Johnston